The customer
Sysco Group is one of the North West's leading training and consultancy providers, working with more than 3,500 organisations throughout the region. The company delivers both vocational and bespoke training and consultancy solutions to all industry sectors, and provides Government-funded training schemes such as Train to Gain and Work Based Learning.

The challenge
Following several high-profile government data breaches, the Sysco management team decided the business required a belt and braces on-site disaster recovery programme. Ian Smith, managing director at Sysco, explains: "Our IT systems hold an enormous amount of data which is critical to our business; if we can't provide our clients with the right information then we don't get paid. Recognising what an important issue this is for our business prompted us to take steps to safeguard the integrity of our data and ensure access to it at all times."

The service
Sysco selected AIMES Grid Services as its service provider on the basis of the company's reputation for providing cutting-edge technology that is affordable for smaller businesses. Ian Smith says: "We were delighted that the service proposed by AIMES not only met our requirements for integrity and continuous use, but was also within the price range of an organisation of our size."

The AIMES solution comprises a real time replication and failover service which streams data from Sysco to the AIMES ISO27001 certified data centre facility at Liverpool Innovation Park. If Sysco's on-site servers fail for any reason, including loss of power, virtual servers within the AIMES data centre automatically take over, ensuring no interruption in service for Sysco's clients and staff.

The benefits
AIMES is delivering the service over a three year period and Ian Smith can already see the benefits, he comments: "The two big benefits of the service are: peace of mind and cost. Peace of mind because everyone here is a PC user - we log on to our PCs first thing in the morning and use them all day. A server failure would cost us heavily but we no longer have to worry about that.

"We're also benefitting from a cost perspective because the AIMES business model makes it possible for small businesses, like ourselves, to access cutting-edge technology that has traditionally been out of our price range."

Richard Spragg, technical director at AIMES, adds: "Real time data replication and failover is widely regarded as the Rolls Royce of disaster recovery solutions, which is why it's the choice of so many blue chip companies.

"Traditionally, it's come with a premium price tag though, which has kept it out of reach of many smaller businesses. Investments in local digital infrastructure are changing the business model for these types of services and enabling AIMES to make them accessible to local SMEs like Sysco."